Am I the worst engineer in the Silicon Valley?

Mozilla
butterfli

Go to company page Mozilla

butterfli
Jun 24, 2021 419 Comments

Sometimes when my imposter syndrome is running hot and I’m driving down the 101, I look at all the massive offices from Oracle to Rakuten to Microsoft to Google Cloud and wonder if I’m the worst engineer in the Silicon Valley. If I wasn’t, my logic reasons, wouldn’t I be working at one of these places?

Since I’m not, likely every single one of the engineers in those buildings is a better engineer than me. If you count all the buildings, that’s a whole lot of people that are better engineers than me.

So I guess here lies the question- how do you know if you’re the worst? Does anyone else feel like they’re the worst engineer in the Valley?

6285 PARTICIPANTS SELECT ONLY ONE ANSWER
VOTE VIEW RESULT

comments

Want to comment? LOG IN or SIGN UP
TOP 419 Comments
  • Try drive on 680 next time
    Jun 24, 2021 3
  • Microsoft
    ヽ(ಠل͜ಠ)ノ

    Go to company page Microsoft

    ヽ(ಠل͜ಠ)ノ
    Just remember, there are always dumbasses that work at these companies too that got their job because they played the game right.
    Jun 24, 2021 4
  • Amazon
    amznupup

    Go to company page Amazon

    amznupup
    No, you are not. I am the worst engineer in the bay.
    Jun 24, 2021 13
  • Google / Eng
    6Feet6Inch

    Go to company page Google Eng

    6Feet6Inch
    I’m going to let you in on a secret - most engineers in these big shiny companies have lucked out on their interview day, no one likes to admit this, everyone likes to claim the fame but this is the truth. You wonder how they survive after getting in? It’s simple, 90% of the work is dead boring. Most of the systems are well built out and you’re only doing incremental changes. This is the truth. So it’s nothing special. Heck, I once dreamed of working at Mozilla and I bet tens of thousands of engineers would do rn too.

    And it’s all a zero-sum game. You don’t get an award at the end of your life for working in Google or Facebook. No point in comparing, as there is no end to it. After getting in one of these companies, you will look at pre-IPO folks in a certain startup rocket their TC to 1-1.5M, again you will feel sad and unhappy. So there is no end to this.
    Jun 27, 2021 8
    • New
      iwAt45

      New

      iwAt45
      That's true. I do much more complicated/skilled work at the startup I work at that requires thought and deep thinking and understanding of software architecture, but failed a FAANG interview because I did not give a shit about performing live fast. In the end I got the result I really wanted: didn't wanna join the company and was doing it because they reached out to me even though I thought the work was boring as hell.
      Jun 28, 2021
    • Roku
      BwuO85

      Go to company page Roku

      BwuO85
      > You don’t get an award at the end of your life for ..
      this is the jist of it. thanks for articulating this so well.
      Jun 28, 2021
  • Flagged by the community.